Through the trees
by Moony-the-Lindt-addict
Summary: A wizard? asked the tree in his deep, languid tone, looking at the tiny "freak" -the word resonated oddly the tree thought but it wasn't an orc and it wasn't an elf -with the jewel eyes who had never ever ever heard even the word wizard before. A wizard is like a...'freak' but taller. Harry thought this seemed reasonable and the tree had quite exhausted his quota of words


Harry ran and ran and ran, until he'd gotten to the forest. He reflected a little while later, when he'd gone so deep into the forest that he couldn't see if it was light or day anymore, that there really weren't any forests in Private Drive that he could remember. But then that wasn't very odd, because Harry had never really gone out of the house except to weed the garden.

He listened a bit, but didn't hear Ripper. And he relaxed.

The moss was a lot softer than his thin matress with the springs coming out. Which made him black and blue, had his neck hurt when he woke and often time had long, red, scratches on his skin when he woke up. And when he woke up, there were huge, beautiful berries, just like those he saw at the supermarket –the really big, really pink ones.

He ate them until he couldn't eat anymore and his mouth was stained with red, and his tea shirt and hands, drank his fill of the dew in the large leaves from the trees, then, after a little while, decided he had better walk some more, in case the Dursley came looking for him. He'd never not done chores and not been insulted and punched in his whole life, and he'd never been that full, and he'd never had his fill of even water –although it was fine using a lot of it to wash the dishes –but the dishes were worth _something_, weren't they?

There were no dishes in the woods. Harry decided he quite liked it.

When it had been a long time –but he couldn't tell how long because day and night weren't all that different in those woods –which were really thick and woody, thank you very much. He started talking to the trees a bit –because people who talked to themselves, uncle Vernon would always say, were complete nutters.

When one day a tree answered him, he decided it was pretty normal. The trees were a lot more alive in the forest obviously. Besides, uncle Vernon and Petunia had said that magic wasn't real, and imagination was a simply ridiculous thing. Either something was real and sturdy and normal. Or it wasn't. The tree was definitely talking. And just because he'd never heard a tree talk before, didn't mean it wasn't _normal._ After all, there were a lot of people living in London, and he had not seen all of them but they were still real and normal.

He'd never had enough time to think of things like that before.

He would have started to be a little bored, but the tree, after some initial oddness (he'd asked him if he was an orc, Harry had told him that no, he wasn't an orc. He was a freak. What _was_ an orc? Orcs were nasty creatures that liked fire and the trees did not like fire. That seemed reasonable, said Harry. The tree thanked politely, then asked what a freak was. Harry had never thought all that much about it. Someone like me, I suppose. Well, answered the tree, you are very odd and not like a tree or like an elf. There had been a lull. Then Harry had asked what an elf was and the tree had not been unhappy to respond,) the tree had proved to be a very pleasant companion and knew where Harry could find mushrooms. And, one day, after a rabbit scared him and ended up floating in mid air, its nose twitching confusedly and its paws trying to find the floor three meters down, a glistening amber in the forest.

Harry had been scared that he'd done something freakish and the tree wouldn't want to be his friend anymore. The tree had thought about it, then had said that he didn't know too much about fricken things, but that had looked like wizardry to him.

Harry had never heard the word wizard in his life and was a bit confused. The tree, when applied to, wasn't that much better off. He'd never tried to explain what a wizard was before, and he realised he wasn't too sure about what he was meant to explain either. After a very, very long reflexion he declared, not untruthfully, that a wizard was like a freak. But taller. Which sounded very logical, as far as a tree and a six year old could judge.

Anyways, that was why it had taken him to get the amber. It was a very good amber. Any wizard would have liked an amber like it. Every wizard had a staff, and the staff was better with a stone on it, he had always thought. So he'd gladly given Harry one of his old branches which didn't even feel there anymore and had told him to tell the branch to encase the crystal. Like he told the berries to grow when he was hungry.

Harry did so, admired his new staff very much. Then found that it had made him hungry, so he told some berries to grow.


End file.
